Tuesday, 13 December 2011

Apple has been having a lot of legalheadaches
lately and now there's a new one. Now, it's Motorola that's causing the
Cupertino-based company trouble as it won a preliminary injunction
against several Apple products in Germany. It's not the first time either.
Anyway, today's injunction affects practically all Apple gadgets
with GPRS connectivity - the iPhone, iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4, iPad 3G and
iPad 3GS have been named, but the 4S is infringing on Motorola's patent
as well (it came out after the suit was filed so it's not mentioned
explicitly).
Motorola hasn’t won the case yet, but if they choose they can
enforce that injunction in Germany. To do that, they need to provide a
€100 million bond. That's a risk for the company that only recently
stopped its decline - if they end up losing the suit, the money will
have to be paid out to Apple. Also, Apple might appeal this decision
and win a stay of the injunction.
It's hard to say how things will go. Motorola's patent is probably
vital for GPRS and Apple can't do without it. Motorola might be forced
to offer a license to Apple, but for now Moto's lawyers have managed to
avoid that, at least until Apple pays for past damages (starting from
2007).
Apple doesn’t want to pay for past damages - that can turn out to be
rather pricy - and is seeking to invalidate Motorola's patent and solve
its problem (in this particular case) outright.
A second hearing is scheduled for February, we'll see how things
progress then. By the way, Apple is sued for that exact same patent in
the US, too, but things seem to be going better for the iPhone maker
there (that case hasn’t been resolved yet, either).
The world of patents is very complicated and often confusing. You can read FOSS Patent's blog post on the courts ruling if you have a head for such legal matters.